“On that note, only one trend from the last few days of scrimmages really stands out to me, and it’s the number of times Melo has been the roll man in the pick-and-roll. He hardly did that last year (22 total times, according to Synergy), but I feel like I’ve seen him set quite a few picks for Felton during practice.”

A critical part to the season is clearly getting Melo comfortable in his role, and what we watched during the summer was a player who was certainly comfortable as the screener in the pick and roll/pop. That should make fans who are leery of being a “ball stopper” feel a little better seeing that he will be getting the ball of action and not off dump down and holds. This, of course, brings in the question of how the team will implement Amar’e in the offense. To me, you can have multiple pick and role/pop players, but I think this would allow for Amar’e to utilize his quickness and new moves in the post for some dump downs as well forcing teams to double team him and kicking out to the perimeter. Essentially, they are flip flopping spots while adding depth and flexibility to their own games and the offense as a whole.